Buenos Aires, Argentina (CNN) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was given a prestigious journalism award in Argentina on Tuesday, despite his frequent and outspoken criticism of media outlets at home and abroad.

Chavez received the Rodolfo Walsh journalism award from Argentina's Universidad Nacional de La Plata "for his unquestionable and authentic commitment to support the freedom of peoples."

..Flush with petrodollars, Chavez's government in 2005 helped create Telesur, a state-funded television network that covers news from throughout Latin America and the globe. Telesur has been championed as an alternative voice to privately owned media conglomerates, but also criticized for its one-sided coverage of Chavez. Ironically, at Tuesday's award ceremony, private television networks were prohibited from broadcasting the event with their own cameras and instead had to air the signal provided by Telesur.

Journalists and politicians in Argentina criticized the choice of Chavez as the award recipient, claiming that he has continually worked to silence his critics and suppress freedom of the press throughout Venezuela.

"Chavez has closed more than 30 radio stations and six television channels and constantly threatens to take away broadcast licenses of any media that is at all critical of his administration," said Jorge Macri, a congressman from Buenos Aires province. "That's why I consider it a lack of respect for the people who have received this award previously that it is now being awarded to the Venezuelan president."

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Michael Ignatieff followed-up his embarrassing avoidance of the question of whether he'd form a coalition with Canada's other political parties a day later with an unequivocal denial that he would do so.

A recent poll says only 17% of Canadians believe him. Which proves that 17% of Canadians are gullible.

If Steven Harper fails to achieve a majority on May 2, then it's a certainty that the Liberals will form a coalition with the other parties, and there are two very clear reasons why that will happen.

The first requires only a basic familiarity with the Liberal Party of Canada.

The Liberals are Canadian democracy's answer to the ancient Carthaginians, who executed their own generals if they were defeated in battle. Liberals do not tolerate failure from their leaders. The example of the palace coup that Paul Martin's gang inflicted on Jean Chretien shows Canada's Liberals don't even tolerate success when they get too antsy and hungry for power.

If the Conservatives fail to achieve a majority this election, one of two things will happen. Ignatieff will either renege on his promise and form a coalition to put the Liberals in power, or he will be removed from the Liberal leadership faster than you can say "Stephane Dion." In the event of the latter scenario, Ignatieff's successor, not bound by a 'no coalition' pledge, will form one with the NDP and have support from the Bloc.

There is another reason the opposition parties will rush to form a coalition if the Conservatives fail to achieve a majority. Stephen Harper tried to bring in campaign financing reform that would have seen all political parties lose their federal subsidies. Those tax dollars go to propping up parties that don't get enough donations to support themselves from private sources.

The Bloc and NDP in particular rely heavily on that money and they would collapse without it. The last proposed Liberal/NDP/Bloc coalition emerged as a result of Harper's threat to cut off those funds, and the next one would emerge in order to preclude that threat from reoccurring.

So in essence, we do have a two party race in this election; the Conservatives versus a coalition.

But make no mistake, if there is no Tory majority, that coalition will be in place to assume power. At least until the Liberals figure out a way they can rule without them.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Michael Ignatieff 's Liberals are the only viable national alternative to the governing Conservatives, but they remain stagnant in the polls. The ex-Oxford professor is smart but uncharismatic, and lacks the common touch that politicians like Jean Chretien and Bill Clinton were able to make long political careers out of.

Stephen Harper, no Mr. Excitement himself, has created the impression that he has preserved our economic standing through hazardous global upheavals, and compared to Ignatieff, he's practically Harrison Ford in popular appeal.

But the Conservatives have some wonky, anti-libertarian, nanny-state policies ripe for exploitation by the Liberals, if only they had the courage to take them on.

One of these is Harper's antiquated, uninformed marijuana policy.

Police chiefs all over Canada realize that enforcing marijuana laws is impractical and pointless. Cops themselves (even the ones who don't smoke pot) don't take marijuana possession seriously as a crime, while most people who understand its effects know that it is far less damaging to society than alcohol.

Stoned drivers aren't responsible for thousands of traffic accidents and fatalities every year. Stoned members of the public aren't likely to be hyper-aggressive and pick bar fights. While the government treats the public as adults when it comes to alcohol consumption, it makes a hefty profit for public coffers through related taxes and jobs at the same time. But in the case of marijuana, we have paternalistic laws that are a waste of money and resources to enforce, to no real avail, and benefit no one but criminals who sell contraband.

It might be Ignatieff's only chance to stand out and shift the public debate to an area where he can go on the offensive if he were to attack Harper's unsound position on cannabis laws. We know just about every Canadian politician who supports legal sanctions against marijuana is a hypocrite who has partaken of the weed at some point.

Rather than enforcing anti-marijuana legislation that creates criminals while benefiting crime lords, why not legalize and tax it, creating jobs for Canadians and a new source of government revenue?

The only demographic group that has given the Liberals a lead over the Conservatives in polls is the under 25 year-olds. But this age group is traditionally unexcited by politics and is the most likely not to bother to vote. If Ignatieff were to propose legalizing and taxing marijuana, he could latch on to an issue that actually would excite and motivate that demographic group.

If he has the guts to take that step remains to be seen. I'm not betting on Ignatieff doing that, but if he did, it would make the May 2 election a lot more exciting than being just a question of whether Stephen Harper gets a big or a small majority government.

Monday, March 28, 2011

And yet, according to an exclusive new poll commissioned by QMI Agency, most Canadians - including his own supporters - simply don't believe him.

Leger Marketing surveyed 1,119 Canadians Saturday and Sunday and asked, among other things, if they believe Ignatieff when he says he's "ruling out a coalition." Only 17% of those surveyed were prepared to take him at his word.

The Toronto Star's Heather Mallick, demonstrating her usual histrionic doltishness, seems determined to do for Stephen Harper what she did for Rob Ford; create such hysterical nonsense that it actually helps the campaign of the person she viscerally hates.

In her column in today's Star, her unconcealed loathing of Harper is reminiscent of her notorious piece cleverly dubbed by colunmist Rick McGuiness as "Heather Mallick's hate-f*ck with Rob Ford." In that, she treated her readers to an imagined sexual tryst with the then-mayoral candidate (now Toronto's mayor) and her disgust and self-loathing at its aftermath. That column suggested an author so unhinged as to evoke the idea at the radical leftist website rabble.ca that Mallick was actually an agent provocateur working to get Ford elected.

In her column today, Mallick imagines a Canada where Steven Harper's Conservatives form a majority government.

Harper's detractors have accused him of being a 'dictator,' although always omitting how it's possible to be so in a minority government where the opposition parties could have ousted him at any time. Since Canadians are no less free and have no fewer rights since Harper became Prime Minister in 2006, sane people might be surprised at Mallick's contention that the result of a Conservative majority would be, "Guns on the street, gated communities, rampant drug use, unlimited anonymous corporate political donations, no government safety standards for food and medicine.."

But that's just for starters!

It seems that there's something about conservative politicians that sends Mallick's brain into spin-out mode, not that she's known for rational pronouncements at the best of times. What might be vaguely clever as satire seems a sign of mental instability when she seriously proposes that "Harper's targeting of perceived enemies verges on the Stalinist." Either Mallick has absolutely no familiarity with the history of Stalinist Russia, or she exhibits a pathology about Harper that needs to be resolved by physicians rather than politicians.

According to Mallick, in a Harper majority, "women's rights would retreat, including abortion rights, access to medical advances and the right to go to court to protest inequality."

Mallick hasn't made me change my opinion about Harper. But it does confirm the Toronto Star's commitment to employment equity. Evidently, exhibiting signs of paranoid schizophrenia does not disqualify someone from getting a job as a columnist there.

Radical activist Judy Rebick, whose raison d’etre seems to be to have something, anything to shout into a megaphone about, implicitly admitted the dishonesty of anti-Israel activists’ agenda at an “Israeli Apartheid Week” meeting on March 7 of this year. She confessed that use of the term “Israeli Apartheid” is a propaganda tool.

“There’s the brilliance, the propaganda brilliance of calling it Israeli Apartheid Week,” she gleefully asserted, “every time these people, you know, put a motion through parliament or through the legislature..they have to say Israel’s not an apartheid state ..and so over time, it really is a brilliant propaganda tactic because each time it becomes more familiar.”

What Rebick seems not to have understood is that her stand has become familiar as one of deceitful propaganda. But that distinction hasn't been lost on Canadian parliamentarians who denounced the “Israeli Apartheid” movement in the strongest terms yet following the declaration by Canadian "Israeli Apartheid Week" organizers that Canada is an 'apartheid' state.

At the same anti-Israel event at the University of Toronto where Rebick spoke, the Israeli Apartheid Week organizers issued a statement saying that:

" In crucial ways, the Canadian state's treatment of indigenous peoples, historically and currently, can be described as an apartheid system. .. As non-natives, we have a role within our communities to further the process of decolonizing Canada. If you are with us in opposition to Israeli Apartheid, we encourage your consistent opposition to apartheid right here in Canada."

Peter Kent, Canada's federal Minister of the Environment, didn't mince his words when describing the "Israeli Apartheid Week" organizers' statement and the ideology that drives them.

"These people, if they're Canadians, are either self-loathing, ignorant, or very poorly informed. Successive Canadian governments have spent tens of billions of dollars to improve the lives of our First Nations peoples, who enjoy the same rights, opportunities and privileges as all Canadian citizens. By saying that contemporary Canada practices apartheid, the so-called Israeli Apartheid Movement betrays itself as being made up of intellectually dishonest hate-mongers."

The Liberal Party's Critic for Democratic Renewal, St. Paul's MP Carolyn Bennett, offered the following: "Use of the word "apartheid" is inflammatory and inaccurate and works against any meaningful conversation on the peace process in the middle east or the plight of our aboriginal peoples here in Canada ." She also made reference to Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's recent statement about 'Israeli Apartheid Week' which describes it as "a dangerous cocktail of ignorance and intolerance."

Canada is one of Israel's closest allies and that support has made them frequent scapegoats of the anti-Israel movement, which now appears anxious to vilify Canadian policy as well. These sentiments are regularly expressed on the website rabble.ca, which is the media sponsor of "Israeli Apartheid Week." Rabble was founded by Judy Rebick and is published by Kim Elliott, who is the spouse of the same NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies who in June 2010 expressed support for the boycott, sanctions and divestment campaign against Israel. The anti-Israel activists' ‘Canadian apartheid’ statement was foreshadowed by Rebick who, in defending Ms Davies, said "I don't think the establishment of the state of Canada is just."

Olivia Chow, the NDP MP for Trinity Spadina, the downtown Toronto riding which includes The University of Toronto campus where the "Canadian Apartheid" statement was made, has not responded to requests to comment for this article.

However, Ontario Provincial legislators were not shy in their condemnation. The response of Steve Clark, the Progressive Conservative Critic for Citizenship and Immigration was concise, saying "It's unbelievable to see that level of ignorance."

The representative for Ontario provincial riding of Thornhill, Peter Shurman, expressed disgust at the accusation of 'Canadian Apartheid.' "Idiots" was how he described the Israeli Apartheid Week organizers, adding "and you can quote me on that!"

Mr. Shurman, who last year was a co-sponsor of a unanimously adopted motion in the Ontario Legislature denouncing Israeli Apartheid Week, continued: "Canada and Israel have shared democratic values. Neither country is perfect, just as no country in the world is, and people of good conscience are working to improve conditions in democratic countries every day. But to describe these two countries that place democracy as their highest value as 'apartheid' is beyond absurd. Apartheid describes a racist legal system of enforced racial separation and discrimination that existed in South Africa until 1993. No rational person could possibly say that ‘apartheid’ in any way describes either Canada or Israel in 2011. These fanatics have revealed themselves to be not just bigoted against Israel but opposed to basic Canadian democratic values too."

'Canadian Apartheid' proponent Alan Sears, a Sociology professor at Ryerson University, provided some revealing insight in a recent interview where he suggested the movement to delegitimize Israel is the first step in a broader campaign to combat capitalism. He said he supports "targeting..capitalism at (its) deepest..the question is how do we get there?.. The way that struggles begin to start is with specific targets that are achievable and then ..the movement can get broader."

As a champion of Canada's relationship with Israel, Environment Minister Kent's constituency office has been the target of demonstrations by anti-Israel groups. He has praise for the people who are working towards peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but was adamant that groups and individuals seeking to falsely label Israel as an apartheid state do not fall into that category.

Of the latter, Mr. Kent's condemnation was unequivocal, "They're making absolutely no contribution to the peace process in the mid-east and are clearly operating on a selective, hateful agenda; peace between Israel and the Palestinians is obviously not on that agenda."

A pair of polls, by Ekos and Forum Research, released in the last three days gives Steven Harper's Conservatives either a 7 or a 17 per cent lead over Michael Ignatieff's Liberals and the NDP trailing well behind. However a closer look at the demographic breakdown of the poll indicates that his lead will translate into even more votes on May 2 than revealed by the polls' totals.

When I looked at the polls more closely, it reminded me of an experience when I was a Strategic Planning executive for a major Hollywood production company. After attending a screening of a particular movie that was made for a primarily female audience, a head of production approached me and asked what I thought. I suggested certain changes that could be accomplished through editing, and he told me that he expected the movie as it stood to do extremely well. His assessment was based on the boast that the movie had received some of the best focus group responses from middle aged women he had even seen. "That may well be," I told him, "but middle-aged women don't go to the movies all that often."

He gave me a condescending smile following my observation, and then two months later, avoided me for a while after the movie tanked at the box office and ended up losing millions of dollars.

Looking at the poll numbers, the Liberals and the NDP have their strongest support in the under 25 age group, whereas the Tories keep getting stronger results as the ages of the respondents goes up. And it's always older voters who are more likely to turn up to cast a vote on election day. In the Ekos poll, which places the Conservatives and Liberals the closest, the Tories' lead over the Liberals is 3% in the 25-44 age group, over 11% in the 45-64 group, and a staggering 27% lead among seniors, the single-most dedicated group of voters.

As far as a 'gender gap' goes, there isn't one. Although men prefer the Tories by a greater margin than women, the Conservatives lead the Liberals among both male and female voters.

Another telling result from the poll that should make Conservative strategists very happy is that 51.6% of Canadians think the country is headed in the right direction versus 38.5% who don't.

When people think something is moving in the right direction, they're not likely to change course. The way things look, that majority of Canadians who believe their country is doing well now will translate into a majority of Conservative MPs in the House of Commons after the May 2 election.

Friday, March 25, 2011

"WHEREAS Neil Young is one of the most gifted, influential and celebrated singer-songwriters in rock and roll history. He is a prolific artist with a career spanning more than 40 years, five JUNO Awards, two Hall of Fame inductions and countless chart-topping singles and albums.

Young has been an outspoken advocate on many issues. He has promoted environmentalism and sustainability through his Farm Aid benefit concerts and his recent work with LincVolt in the development of an experimental electric car. Young also helped found The Bridge School, an educational organization for children with severe verbal and physical impairments.

For his charitable work, he was named the 2010 MusiCares Person of the Year by The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and is the recipient of the 2011 Allan Waters Humanitarian Award, an award that recognizes an outstanding Canadian artist whose humanitarian contributions have positively enhanced the social fabric of Canada.

The impact of Neil Young's music as well as his philanthropy has touched millions of lives and spans generations. He is a proud Canadian and stands as an exemplary humanitarian whose dedication to deserving causes and to the music industry is a true inspiration.

NOW THEREFORE, I, Mayor Rob Ford, on behalf of Toronto City Council, do hereby proclaim March 28, 2011 as "Neil Young Day".

Though they finally engaged this week, every day of America's and the Western allies' prolonged inaction during the Libyan revolt put NATO's credibility at risk. Each rebel death seemed a painful reminder of a lesson established by Jimmy Carter's inept handling of the Khomeniites' takeover of Iran and George H.W. Bush's betrayal of Iraqi Shiite rebels in the first Gulf War, that "to be America's enemy is dangerous, to be its friend is fatal."

So, as was the case in Afghanistan and Iraq, a new coalition has entered the fray in Libya. And like in the previous two interventions, we know we want regime change, but we don't quite know what to do if things get ugly afterwards.

Prussian Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke was paraphrased as saying "no plan survives contact with the enemy." Perhaps that was what Barack Obama, a master of disinformation, was thinking when he said on Tuesday that America's "Exit Strategy" would begin this week. That was a rather unusual pronouncement considering that so far, not only is there no real exit strategy for Libya, but we don't even have a clearly defined entry strategy.

As of today, NATO left the the US disappointed by only agreeing to assume responsibility for the No Fly Zone, leaving attacks against Gaddafi's ground troops the responsibility of whomever will take that role. It will likely fall to the US, the UK and possibly Canada and France to assume that responsibility.

There is a school of thought present among a certain category of Western "progressive" whose devotion to Marxist ideology makes them consider capitalism and perceived imperialism to be worse crimes than the Taliban's brutality and its denial of civil rights and education to Afghan women, or to the fratricidal bloodbath that would have consumed Iraq if the coalition had withdrawn prematurely. But them aside, notwithstanding the lack of effective strategies for Afghanistan and Iraq, no reasonable person would argue the world isn''t better off for having the Taliban and Saddam Hussein removed from power.

So far, no one knows much about the Libyan opposition, much less what a government that replaces Gaddafi will look like, but we do know a world without Gaddafi running a country is a better one.

The precedents for Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq may be in the presence the US maintains to this day in Germany and Japan, decades after the 2nd World War concluded. Those countries are now democratic and among the most stable and prosperous in the world. What this teaches us, but no one is willing to admit, is that like in the cases of other successful major military interventions, the only real exit strategy is to wait until the job of stabilizing a country is complete.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Kiss' Israeli-born frontman, Gene Simmons, is shouting out loud at the string of musicians who refuse to perform in his homeland. "They're fools," the legendary bassist told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday, on his first return to Israel since leaving the country as a child more than 50 years ago.

In a sense, Jack Layton is Canada's Willy Loman, the frustrated salesman from Arthur Miller's most famous play. He may be liked, but not well-liked enough for Canadians to seriously consider giving Layton and the NDP any chance of being the top party in a government. There's good reason for this.

The NDP is a dysfunctional party made of varied and strange components, but in essence can be broken down to two major factions, the radicals and the pragmatists. These factions are personified by Layton's two deputy leaders, Libby Davies and Thomas Mulcair. Davies represents a Vancouver riding with one of the highest poverty and drug-addiction rates in the country. Her radical faction includes a Socialist Caucus that openly admires Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and has been involved in demonstrations where speakers have called for violent revolution in Canada. They have other anti-capitalist and anti-globalization advocates playing ideological guides for the movement in the informally NDP-affiliated think tank, The Council of Canadians, headed by activist Maude Barlow. The radicals also have members like Windsor MP Joe Comartin who recently acted as a sycophantic stage prop for British fanatic George Galloway at a rally at the York Region Islamic Society.

The New Democrats' sane, social democratic faction represented by pragmatists like Foreign Affairs Critic, Thomas Mulcair, has been trying to keep a lid on the radicals. Mulcair, MP for the Outremont riding in Quebec, knows the overwhelming majority of the public would be alienated were they to hear about the direction the NDP radicals want to take Canada.

Never was this internecine conflict more apparent than when Davies' extremist views about Israel were inadvertently exposed in a YouTube interview in June 2010. In it she expressed support for the boycott, sanctions and divestment campaign targeting Canada's mid-east ally, and she made statements suggesting she questioned Israel's validity as a country.

The exposure of Davies' views couldn't have come at a worse time for the NDP. Jack Layton had both the Conservatives and the Liberals on the ropes with embarrassing questions and attacks over their deal to conceal parts of the Afghan mission files. The information in them, which covered a period that spanned Liberal and Conservative governments, was potentially damaging to both parties. The NDP was revelling in the moral superiority given to them by the agreement of Harper and Ignatieff's parties to suppress the release of the Afghan documents.

Both the governing Tories and the Liberals immediately pounced on Davies' blunder. Harper and Bob Rae were part of a chorus calling for Layton to fire her. And rather than exploiting his opponents' vulnerability, Layton was now spending all his time doing damage control because of Davies. Appearances on TV to distance himself and the party from Davies' statements and a personal apology to the Israeli ambassador became Layton's unwanted priorities for the end of last summer's parliamentary session.

Layton and Mulcair told Davies, in no uncertain terms, to keep her mouth shut about Israel and anything that could drag the party into more unwelcome controversy.

But Davies' wasn't fired as deputy leader for a clear reason. She is the mother figure to the radical element in the NDP who, though a minority, punch well above their weight in the party when it comes to activism and organizing. Diminishing Davies' role would have been taken badly by a critical if potentially humiliating component of the party.

Now that the country has been launched into an election campaign, there are still question of how damaging new revelations about Davies and her faction will be to Layton.

There is a convergence of 9-11 conspiracy theorists and anti-Israel fanaticism in the deranged fringes of society. Canadians may be somewhat more sceptical about Layton's judgement when they hear that one of his deputy leaders has espoused 9-11 conspiracy theories as well as taking stridently anti-Israel positions.

Generally ignored at the time, Libby Davies introduced a 9-11 conspiracy petition into parliament in 2008. One thing to consider is that it is typically unheard of for an MP to introduce a petition to parliament if they disagree with its premise. For example, Davies isn't going to introduce a petition requesting that abortion be re-criminalized or that immigration numbers be reduced.

But even then, there's a pro forma means by which an MP will introduce a petition to parliament which gives them plausible deniability. They say they're introducing it on behalf of constituents and then read the petition verbatim.

Davies doesn't just introduce the 9-11 conspiracy petition in the routine manner. It was signed by only 500 delusional oddballs scattered across this nation of 35 million and she doesn't read it verbatim. She summarizes it and presents it as if it contains facts to which Canada's Parliament must be alerted and act upon.

Davies' own words introducing the petition are:

"It draws the attention to the House of the following, that scientific and eyewitness evidence shows that the 9-11 Commission Report is a fruadulent document and that elements within the US government were complicit in the murder of thousands of people on 9-11, 2001. This event, the petition points out, brought Canada into the so-called War on Terror that has changed the domestic and foreign policies for the worse, and will have negative consequences for Canada."

Layton is trying to play a difficult balancing act between his party's factions. But by keeping Davies prominent in order not to alienate the NDP's most ferverent activists, Layton risks alienating the rest of Canada's voters and calling his judgement into disrepute.

UPDATE MAY 5: Thomas Mulcair just proved me wrong about one thing - evidently there is no rational wing in the NDP.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

"Summary: During PolCouns's introductory call on new MEA Additional Secretary (UN and International Security) KC Singh, Singh shared his impressions from his recent posting as India's Ambassador in Tehran, emphasizing that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's perspective is skewed by his fervent anticipation of the imminent return of the prophesied twelfth Shia imam, making him prone to respond to threats by acting as a martyr. The irrational nature of Iran's new regime requires a different approach from the current strategies of the US and EU-3, Singh argued.

..Singh argued that the US and the West must choose between completely peaceful engagement or application of force, but not alternate between engagement and threats. Citing former NSA Brzezinski's analysis of the failure of the Shah's regime to act with consistency, he said that verbal threats only ""inoculate"" the population against the threat, and force the Iranian regime to ""mutate"" into something more dangerous."

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Things have gotten very strange in the bloggers' pin-up wars. So in the spirit of knowing that as long as there has been the human ability to depict things, there has been the desire to depict and reproduce beauty..

• People of a certain age might think: "Wasn't she an exotic dancer in the 1970s? Famous for her measurements? She made a movie with Fellini, didn't she? She must have been some red-hot mama, whoo hoo!' • Yes, that was Chesty Morgan, a woman objectified all over the planet for having what one night club promoter called "the world's largest natural breasts! She defies medical science!'' Yes, Chesty Morgan — the woman with the alleged 73-inch bust. • Have your laugh, but listen: The world is a complicated place. Even red-hot mamas have real lives. Often those lives are tragic. Sometimes they are beyond tragic.

She is a small child in 1937. Her father and mother are well-to-do Jews who live near Warsaw. In 1939, Germany invades Poland. Her parents lose their department store. They end up in the ghetto afraid for their lives.

Her mother, Eva, leaves the apartment to find shoes for a niece. She is caught in a German sweep, hauled away in a boxcar, never to return. Little Lillian puts aside food every day —just in case her mother is hungry when she comes home.

Jews eventually fight back. Her father, Leon, is shot dead in a ghetto uprising.

Lillian ends up in Israel, where she lives in a series of orphanages, then in a kibbutz where she studies nursing. She has low self-esteem and worries about everything. Boys think she is beautiful.

Tarek Fatah is a brave voice of true liberalism and reason in a culture that, as Liberal MP Justin Trudeau has recently unintentionally reminded us, is fraught with the stupidity of cultural relativism and moral equivalence.

Tarek's daughter Natasha wrote a moving article about her father's ongoing battle with cancer and their family's use of social media during the ordeal.

I would encourage you to read it (link here) and if you're one of Tarek's many facebook friends, remember to send him a note!

Monday, March 14, 2011

What has been particularly stinging to the Canadians behind the odious bigot-fest called "Israeli Apartheid Week" (IAW) are the irrefutable charges of hypocrisy they face.

Here they are, immigrants, and the descendants of settlers, all occupying land taken from the victims of an actual near-genocide of our indigenous population. Yet rather than address the injustice that they benefit from, they devote all their energies to demonizing a liberal democracy on the other side of the world for its defensive policies. Policies that are far less oppressive than those enacted against North American natives which created advantages for colonial settlers and their successors.

This hypocrisy makes the IAW gang look like the person who dumps toxic waste into a lake and then yells at someone else for peeing into it.

Clearly affected by this criticism, Israeli Apartheid Week organizers have just announced that Canada too is an "apartheid state."

"We as the organizers of Israeli Apartheid Week in Toronto believe that we cannot speak meaningfully about Israeli apartheid without speaking first about the realities of apartheid here in Canada. Canada's reservation system and the treatment of indigenous peoples is (sic) closely studied by the planners of apartheid in South Africa, although this is a hidden chapter of our history. From its very foundations, Canada has been based on the theft of indigenous land and the genocide and displacement of indigenous peoples. In crucial ways, the Canadian state's treatment of indigenous peoples, historically and currently, can be described as an apartheid system.

.. As non-natives, we have a role within our communities to further the process of decolonizing Canada. If you are with us in opposition to Israeli Apartheid, we encourage your consistent opposition to apartheid right here in Canada. .. From Palestine to Turtle Island* there is no justice on stolen land."

So there you have it. They have proclaimed that 'Canadian apartheid' was the inspiration for South African Apartheid, and our version is still going on.

It's possible these bigots think that formally declaring they recognize Canada as an "apartheid" country absolves them of charges of hypocrisy. Actually, it makes it worse. Now, not only are they hypocrites, but it becomes clear that they are also irrational anti-Semites who are willing contributors to "Canadian apartheid."

All countries in the world have had prior occupants with some sort of land grievances. But if contemporary Canada is the living spiritual mother of apartheid, then what are these self-declared "anti-apartheid" activists doing here, continuing to colonize, settle and steal native land? If they honestly believe the foolishness they put forward, why don't they live up to their commitment of "decolonizing Canada" by packing up their bags and take Helen Thomas' advice to Israelis to "go back where they came from"?

Ironically, these are the same people who as a group want to make immigration (i.e. the increased and ongoing theft of Native land) easier. Yet each new immigrant simply increases the crime against Canada's original occupants, adding to "apartheid".

Have these hypocrites in the "Israeli Apartheid" movement actually done anything substantive to end "Canadian apartheid"? There doesn't seem to be any evidence of it. Are they calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Canada? No. That would be inconvenient for them, considering if they did, they would actually have to put their money where their mouths are.

Instead, they do what these types of bigots usually do. Utter meaningless platitudes and then go after the Jews.

The festival of anti-Israeli hatred and bigotry is run mostly by racialists who subscribe to various faddish "critical race theories". These people who allege the falsehood that Israel is in denial about being an apartheid state are themselves racists in denial about their own racism.

This gang of bigots appear to think they have cleared themselves of charges of anti-Semitism by placing a few useful idiot, pitchfork-carrying Jews like Norman Finkelstein and Judy Rebick at the front of their mob.

But the reality remains that of all the many countries in which gross violations of human rights are routine, they decide to go after the one that has the best human rights record in its region, because it's the Jewish one.

They participate in and perpetuate a worse type of "apartheid" than that of which they accuse Israel, and yet it's the Jews who they single out to be the only people to whom they would deny national self-determination.

Unless they act on their statement, it proves that "Israeli Apartheid Week" is just a trendy pretense put on by bigots and marginalized radicals, while even they aren't stupid enough to believe the preposterous words coming out of their own mouths.

Or if they're sincere, you can expect a "Boycott Canada" movement and "Canadian Apartheid Week" coming soon to a campus near you.

Go to 2:48 of the video above to hear the "Canadian Apartheid" statement.

*For the uninitiated, "Turtle Island" is a recently invented "native-sounding" term to describe North America used by radical socialists who want to prove their cred in 'the movement'. There's no evidence actual Natives or anyone else used this term prior to 1974, nor is there compelling evidence that natives mistakenly believed the North American continent to be an island.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Mountain Equipment Co-Op is a Canadian high-end sporting gear retailer that has 14 outlets across Canada. It's a co-op and anyone who has ever made a purchase at one has to take out a membership which gives them voting rights in the organization.

It's an ethical organization that allocates a percentage of its gross revenues to philanthropic causes. As an ethical organization it can distinguish between oppressive states like Iran and a liberal democracy fighting for its survival against fundamentalist enemies bent on its destruction. Some of these fundamentalists are North American Marxists, who have been trying to push for the economic destruction of Israel through lies and disinformation.

The fanatics who want to boycott Israel have been trying, and failing, to get Mountain Equipment Co-Op (MEC) to be part of their bigoted plan. The membership of MEC has, at every opportunity, rejected their proposal and now, the Israel-haters have someone who goes by the name of Dru Oja Jay running for the board. I'd suggest you look at his picture. O.J. looks like he's been French-kissing light sockets.

To vote in the MEC Board elections, you must have been a member prior to January 5th of this year. Voters are permitted three selections.

The "BUYcott Israel" campaign to counter those who want to destroy the Middle East's only liberal democracy has suggested you pick from those candidates who clearly oppose anti-Semitism and the boycott of Israel. They are Bill Gibson, Morrie Schneiderman, Shauna Sylvestre and Jonathan Gallo.

If you were a MEC member before Jan. 5, 2011, you can vote at this link.

Here's a snap from Dru's campaign facebook page thanking "comrade" Amy Miller for posting
on anti-Israel site rabble.ca where she wrote that he would push for a boycott of Israel

And some support from fanatical anti-Israel weirdo David "steaming" Heap

The Canadian Liberal party's polling numbers have plummeted like prices for Christmas tree decorations on Boxing Day. If the recent polls are correct, then the Liberals and New Democratic Party will both lose seats were an election to be held soon and Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives may even get its elusive majority government.

The Liberal party's swing to the left may have acquired them some votes from voters inclined to the NDP and Green parties, but that same move has driven even more centrist Liberal voters into the arms of the Tories.

Despite their best efforts to hammer the Conservatives with scandals like that of Bev Oda's mysterious signature on the CIDA document denying funding to the anti-Israel group, KAIROS and the 5-year old "In and Out" election financing scandal, neither has had any resonance with the public. In fact, Harper's numbers have ascended in the midst of the campaigns to discredit his party.

This phenomenon can be explained by the one Conservative asset that the opposition parties cannot surmount; incompetent, uninspiring leadership from the Liberals, Greens and NDP.

Liberal Foreign Affairs critic and Michael Ignatieff's former (and present?) main rival for party leadership, Bob Rae, seems to be pushing full on for a spring election.

In what sounds like an election push, Rae recently wrote on facebook, "The issue is not Kenney or Oda or Ouimet or Elections Canada - it is now democracy itself, and the simple idea that the rule of law means limits and respect that apply to everyone, even the Harperites. This is the issue of our day and our time - nothing more, nothing less."

Do the Liberals seriously think that if they shout that loudly enough, they can overcome the lack of confidence Canadians have shown in Liberal leadership as exhibited by Ignatieff for the last 3 years and Stephane Dion in the 2 years prior to that?

The answer is, "probably not."

What seems likely at this point is that senior Liberals like Rae realize that as long as Ignatieff helms the party, they're going to be shut out of power. So the sooner they replace him, the sooner they have a shot at winning. For a party like the Liberals, for whom power is frequently the overriding principle, nothing spurs a leadership change faster than an election loss.

Senior Liberals wanting to rebuild the brand have figured out that the fastest way to accomplish that is getting the inevitable Ignatieff loss out of the way quickly, so they can pursue their own ambitions now rather than later.

Blinded by their zeal to stop Ford, too many left-wing councillors chose to attack Griffiths rather than accept his findings and demand greater accountability. They support public housing, not any suggestion of privatization. They support big government, not Ford’s push to cut the size of government. They support more spending at city hall for city-building, not a contraction of the budget.

They lost the last election.

Ford won, promising the opposite of what these councillors practised for seven years under David Miller.

These councillors have a duty to provide effective opposition to Ford. And they do. They also have a duty to protect taxpayers, ahead of members of the TCHC board, ahead of city staff who may have failed to provide proper oversight in the spending of tax dollars.

But instead of focusing on the indiscretions of public service workers, the councillors seemed intent on protecting them, even in the face of the auditor’s findings. And instead of condemning staff behaviour, they wanted to focus on media leaks in the public interest.

The dissenting councillors intimated that Griffiths and/or staff may have leaked portions of two auditors’ reports to the media. They all but said Griffiths had come under the “undue influence” of the mayor. They cast aspersions on his integrity, even as they professed not to.

Then Councillor Adam Vaughan, unable to hide his contempt for the auditor general, gave him a lecture on integrity and public accountability and warned of an “audit process that is going off the rails.”

Staring at Griffiths, an independent auditor with more integrity than a dozen councillors put together, Vaughan instructed him to “tighten the regulations and rules” in his department. Then he upbraided Griffiths, ending with:

“And if there’s a leak in his department, it’s on his watch,” Vaughan spat, jabbing his finger at Griffiths, a few seats away.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

A prominent British imam has been forced to retract his claims that Islam is compatible with Darwin's theory of evolution after receiving death threats from fundamentalists.

Dr Usama Hasan, a physics lecturer at Middlesex University and a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, was intending yesterday to return to Masjid al-Tawhid, a mosque in Leyton, East London, for the first time since he delivered a lecture there entitled "Islam and the theory of evolution".

But according to his sister, police advised him not to attend after becoming concerned for his safety. Instead his father, Suhaib, head of the mosque's committee of trustees, posted a notice on his behalf expressing regret over his comments. "I seek Allah's forgiveness for my mistakes and apologise for any offence caused," the statement read.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Campuses across the Middle East's only liberal democracy will be holding seminars and protests this year to denounce the apartheid to which the Indigenous populations of the Americas are subject. The natives of the Americas were and are the victims of one of the most effective genocides in history, their contemporary numbers are fractional compared to their population prior to the invasion of the Americas by European settlers. The Europeans and their colonialist successors in the "New World" are responsible for the pre-colonial cultures having been mostly destroyed and forgotten.

Even though Indigenous peoples in the Americas have voting rights, they are treated as second class citizens who face discrimination at every turn. The American settlers continue to occupy their lands, reaping wealth from their conquered resources while the true owners of these riches remain impoverished and relegated to non-contiguous Bantustans called "reservations."

Of course there is no American Apartheid Week in Israel. There isn't a country in the world where some people weren't dispossessed in favor of its current population, and grievances regarding that, to some degree, past and present, exist almost everywhere.

Israel is engaged in a land dispute with Palestinians who, while their treatment is exponentially better than the historical sufferings of our First Nations, are still subject to myriad indignities until that conflict is resolved.

But in one of the great ironies that typifies the profound stupidity of North American radicals, they are using facilities built on land stolen from the indigenous population to hypocritically condemn Israel for acting in self-defense.

The rallying cry for activists who opposed South Africa's racist apartheid system was "One man, one vote!" If the real goal of the bigots behind "Israeli Apartheid Week" were that, then they could have declared victory before they started. Israeli Arabs have always had the vote.

People like the discredited Canadian Arab Federation's Khaled Muammar quote Jimmy Carter for support of their position without understanding him or realizing even Carter said, "There is no semblance of anything relating to apartheid within the nation of Israel." While Muammar has made unsubstantiated accusations of racism being at the root of Israeli policy, Carter has stated that Israeli practice in the West Bank "is not based on racism as it was in South Africa, but is based on the desire by a minority of Israelis to acquire land that belongs to the Palestinians."

Those familiar with the agenda of the anti-Israel fanatics who populate "Israeli Apartheid Week" seminars know that they are mostly divided into two camps, radical leftists and Islamists. Within those two camps are two types: those who understand that Israel does not practice apartheid but are happy to attempt to slander what they see as a "Western, imperialist, colonialist outpost in the Middle East," and those who are either too uniformed or too stupid to comprehend the nature of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

These are motley gang who pretend to be "peace activists" and want to send a boat to break a military blockade of Gaza that is designed to prevent Iranian arms shipments that would spark another war. They claim to want to help the "starving" people of Gaza, while denying the reality that Gaza has well-stocked markets, multi-level malls, luxury hotels, and has one of the highest female obesity rates in the world.

Typical of the hypocrisy of holding Israeli Apartheid Week in a country that has eradicated most of its native population is an attitude reflected by Toronto lawyer, Zahra Dhanani.

Dhanani, up until very recently a member of the disgraced Toronto Community Housing Corporation Board, which was compelled to resign en mass by Mayor Rob Ford, gave an interview last year where she decried Israeli actions as "genocide." She may be unaware that "genocide" means the murder of a race. When genocide occurs, the population of the victims drastically declines, as was the case of the native population in Canada, whose land she enables new settlers to occupy through her work as an immigration lawyer. The Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank has more than tripled since 1967, which would make that the opposite of genocide.

Hazardous products are required to carry warning labels; unfortunately, hazardous people are not. But for a week in March, these camps of enraged, obtuse participants at "Israeli Apartheid Week" do society a big favor by separating themselves from the rest of us while engaging in a bigot-fest. In so doing, they let us see who they are and what they truly stand for. They have created a self-imposed Idiot Apartheid Week.

Their annual Idiot Apartheid Week (IAW) helps us all. When you meet someone, instead of having to wait for them to make some idiotic pronouncement to establish if you're dealing with a bigot or a fool, knowing that someone is an IAW participant saves you the time and trouble.

﻿There actually is apartheid in the Middle East. It's practiced by Israel's neighbours in the form of brutal repression of women and religious minorities and in the legalized murder of homosexuals. But we won't see the characters at Idiot Apartheid Week denouncing those crimes against humanity. That would be inconsistent with their idiocy.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Muammar Gaddafi's bestest buddy, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, is doing his best to find a way of saving his fellow dictator's hide.

The very model of a
moronic Major General

Chavez realizes that with Gaddafi, gone, not only will there be one less psychopath at the UN blaming all the world's ills on American imperialism, but with the rapidly declining number of world leaders who dress as if they're performing in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, it'll make him stand out all the more as a buffoon.

So Chavez has floated a peace plan that is rather transparently designed to buy time for Gaddafi and keep him in power.

The other side in Libya, the Libyan National Council, which represents the rebel groups battling Gaddafi's loyalists and mercenaries, has rejected the Chavez plan, as has The United States, the U.K. and France. The Libyan National Council wants international recognition as the legitimate government and have requested that a No Fly Zone be imposed, so that Gaddafi can't use the strategic advantage that his air force and helicopters give him over the rebels.

When it comes to ground forces versus ground forces, the rebels have an big advantage in that they are much better motivated than Gaddafi's mercenaries and are likely to fight more fiercely.

The mercenaries have homes in foreign countries to which they can return. Gaddafi's opponents, were they to be defeated, would have only two options, flee abroad or be killed.

As a side note, this CNN photo shows the traditional anti-Semitic component which always appears in some part of Arab protests, in the form of trying to paint their enemies as either Jews or agents of Jews. The irony of portraying Gaddafi, who was one of the most ferocious enemies of Israel, as a Jew, speaks to the absurd perceptions that still dominate that part of the world.

According to Iran's state-controlled PRESS TV, which also employs terrorist mouthpiece George Galloway, Israel is propping up Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi as he tenuously holds on to the last vestages of his dictatorship.

Gaddafi has spent most of his career as a supporter of international terrorism trying to murder Israelis and Americans, (as well as Libyans who dissented from his autocratic rule), so the likelihood of Israeli support is nil. One wonders who are the bigger idiots in Iran, the demeted morons who create these absurd tales or the propaganda-fed slobs who actually might belive them.

"Egyptian sources have revealed that the Israeli company has so far provided Gaddafi's regime with 50,000 African mercenaries to attack the civilian anti-government protesters in Libya...Gaddafi regime pays $2000 per day for each mercenary."

A very interesting column from John Ibbitson in the Globe and Mail speculates that Stephen Harper's increasing support is coming from fiscally responsible Liberal voters at a greater rate than Ignatieff is siphoning votes from the NDP and Greens by moving his party to the left.

Ibbitson uses the term "Manley Liberals" for right-leaning Liberal voters, but I like "Blue Whigs" better.

Conflicting polls mask an emerging truth: As all parties contemplate a possible spring election, the numbers show the Liberal Party under Michael Ignatieff successfully draining support from the New Democratic and Green parties, just as it hoped to do.

But it is paying a price, as John Manley Liberals defect to the Conservatives, increasing the chances that a spring election would return Stephen Harper as prime minister with a strengthened minority, or possibly even a majority, government.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

PARIS — French fashion house Dior said on Tuesday it is firing John Galliano after complaints were lodged with police that their star designer made offensive and anti-Semitic comments.

Dior said it decided to start procedures to fire Galliano after seeing a video clip that purportedly shows the designer shouting abuse at people in a Paris bar.

“I very firmly condemn what was said by John Galliano, which totally contradicts the values which have always been defended by Christian Dior,” Christian Dior Chief Executive Sidney Toledano said in a statement.

Dior celebrity spokeswoman Natalie Portman also expressed her anger at Galliano. “I am deeply shocked and disgusted by the video of John Galliano’s comments that surfaced today. In light of this video, and as an individual who is proud to be Jewish, I will not be associated with Mr. Galliano in any way,” she said in a statement on Monday.